Pac-12 football: NFL Draft early entries and the 2015 season

Welcome to the first installment (out of at least five, maybe six or seven) of the Hotline’s early look at the 2015 Pac-12 football season.

The series will include an examination of non-conference schedules, projections for the all-conference team and order-of-finish in each division, plus a look at the most pressing questions for the offseason.

We’ll start by assessing the impact of NFL Draft decisions …

As you might recall (but probably don’t), the Hotline addressed the draft exodus at this time last year and noted the total number of defections wasn’t nearly as important to the league’s prospects as the who and the where.

The conference lost a whopping 25 early-entry players in Jan. ’14, but almost half were from teams that didn’t figure to contend for the division/conference/national title. (Cal alone was responsible for almost 20 percent of the departures.)

The return of the three big quarterbacks, Marcus Mariota, Brett Hundley and Sean Mannion, served to further mitigate the early-entry damage.

The conclusion: For the most part, the best teams were spared heavy damage, thereby improving their prospects for stellar seasons and the Pac-12’s prospects to emerge as the nation’s toughest conference.

This year?

The total number of early-entry departures is down significantly — only 16 — but the impact could be far greater than it was in ’15 because of the players and teams involved.

Five would-be contenders are getting hit hard, either by raw numbers or the quality of players: USC, Oregon, Arizona State, UCLA and Stanford.

The details …

USC: Suffered a triple-whammy with the loss of its best receiver (Nelson Agholor) and top tailback (Buck Allen) and the league’s best defensive lineman (Leonard Williams).

Stanford. The Cardinal avoided a body blow when quarterback Kevin Hogan announced he would return, but the losses remain significant: Gone are Stanford’s best offensive lineman, left tackle Andrus Peat, and its most talented defensive back, cornerback Alex Carter.

UCLA: Hundley’s jump to the pros was no surprise. But 32 touchdowns and all those big plays represent a massive loss.

Arizona State: Receiver Jaelen Strong not only made every big play for the Sun Devils (or so it seemed), he made everyone else better because of the attention he attracted.

Conclusion: The raw number of early entries is down 36 percent year-over-year, but the number of impact players from the elite teams is up … way up:

From 50 percent of the total departures to 69 percent.

That doesn’t bode well for ’15.

Here’s the list of the departed, taken from NFL.com as of Friday afternoon.

Please note that there could be a few we don’t know about. The official list will be released later today and I’ll update this post if necessary.